Monday, April 20, 2009

The server instability killed 2 out of our 3 scheduled raiding days, so Sunday night was the first chance we had to get really into the instance and play with bosses that were NOT just a zip-around-in-vehicles funfest. We entered enthusiastic and held up to the wipes with good humor; we ended the night with XT-002, Kologarn, and Auriaya dead.

I picked up the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth. My little rogue is a wonderful farmer, and I finally sold enough saronite and scraped my pennies together to purchase the extra-large mammoth and hire on a couple vendors. As the only one in the guild, it was a very pleasant surprise for the raid to have easy access to repairs, reagents, and arrows :) Once we got into the indoor portions of the instance, I'd just run back from wipes quickly and park myself by the teleporter, letting people repair as they ran past.

I did NOT pick up my new glyphs. I could not justify spending 500g on a nourish and a wild growth glyph. Curse you, market abusers! I may pick them up off the Alliance AH and transfer them over to my poor little moocow.

General trash strat: spread out, and stick one healer on either side of the hallway to minimize the chances that both will be running around waving their hands in the air in a panic at the same time. If you see a Molotov Cocktail thrown at you, move out of the glowing red symbol that forms on the floor under it, or you will blow up.

Ulduar Bosses: a View from the Trees

~Note: Ulduar does not have a necessarily linear progression path from one boss to another, so you may not fight the following bosses in this order. This is simply the order in which my guild has killed them, and notes on the parts that I found important as a druid healer.

Flame Leviathan:"Activating anti-personnel countermeasures."

BEEP BEEEEP! No healing here. Have fun driving or shooting or launching your guildies through the air... or all three :) Just don't mistake your flailing guildie as a target to shoot as they soar through the air, and if you're driving a demolisher or chopper, don't forget to pick up said flying guildie after they eject from the boss' roof.

Yes, you can drive in shapeshift forms. Moonkin bikers currently have a bugged animation where they stand on their bike "mining" it.

XT-002 Deconstructor:"New toys? For me? I promise I won't break them this time!"

Firstly, this guy is hilarious. His voice is so high-pitched and squeaky, he's like a giant kid in a robot suit. Also, he does calisthenics while wandering around his room!

LoS: we chose to tank the boss on the top of the stairs, where it we could better control the incoming adds from the 4 corner junkpiles. Small stairwell = LoS issues. I stood on the top stair to the far left, and the other healer to the far right. You can stand on the railing, but you can also fall off of it, so be careful there if you decide to tank the boss on the stairs.

Range: the dps has to run around in this fight, getting away from each other with their bombs. We also need to be able to help the other healer when they get the light bomb, so try to be in range of them, too. If DPS spreads out too far, then your WG can have problems.

Light Bomb: this is the bomb the boss puts on a single player that causes some serious damage to them and everyone around them. There's also a gravity bomb that pulls people around you all on top of you, but that's not as big a deal (though we got an achievement for not having anyone die to a gravity bomb...). When someone gets the lightbomb, they're gonna need heals! Run out of the group/away from people if you can, or tell others to get away from you.

Tantrum: this is the most-dreaded part of the fight, and the place where people are most likely to die. Raid-wide steady AoE damage, and heavy! Be especially watchful of players who have a light bomb on them when Tantrum starts.

Ahhh Monty Python jokes, good times. Tis only a flesh wound! Anyway, this fight may require 3 healers. With a resto druid and a holy priest, we found we needed to have the shadow priest dual-spec over to disc to assist with this boss due to the heavy damage the tanks were taking.

Eye Beams: pay attention, and run away when you get focused with eye beams. Don't run them over someone else, either. Stay relatively spread out from other players, and always be aware of your escape route. We chose to have our ranged players arrange themselves in a rough horseshoe shape, with the back opening into the corridor, so that those with eyebeams could just run out of the door through the center without running the beams over other players. Running outside the room does NOT reset the boss.

Hand Grip: SQUISH... a very technical term. The hand on your own left when facing the boss will grab a player and start squeezing them to death; obviously, you should heal them. If your dps is slow, it may take a while to get the person out... or even too late.

Shock Wave: nature damage, so have your hunters/shammies figure out who's going to put up some resist for you. This is an AoE that deals some pretty heavy raid-wide damage. DBM has a cooldown timer for it, which can help you in making sure everyone in the raid has high enough HP to be able to survive the next shock. Watch this timer around players getting eyebeamed or gripped.

Tank Swaps: Kologarn puts an armor debuff on the tanks that, beyond a stack of 2, can pretty much mean an insta-gib of your tank. Pay attention to them swapping. The debuff can wear off before stacking past 2, so swaps may not be common.

Elementals o' death: when an arm is destroyed, adds will spawn. They can and will kill the healers quickly with Rubble Rumble and melee attacks if an offtank doesn't pick them up. Scream and yell if you must! They are not cuddly friendly pets.

The kitties are so cute! The strat for this lady is pretty simple for healers: heal people, and stand with the MT (or behind the MT) hugging a tremor totem.

Stay out of LoS of the boss during the pull so you don't get kitty aggro. We look like giant scratching posts to her pets.... /pouncy!

If you get feared out of position, run back to your position.

There is an aoe, a cone Sonic Scream attack that acts like a cleave but is spread out among those who took the hit, so you want as many people taking that damage as possible. If you're the only one standing there with the tank, you're gonna die.... if only a few people are there, they're going to take very heavy damage.

Keep everyone topped off, and be mindful of LoS on the offtank/adds people.

Try to stack healers and tanks in the party that has Tremor totem, if available.

Don't blame yourself if the pull goes wonky and the kitty adds double-pounce on some poor hapless hunter or even a tank, instantly slaughtering them... it happens, wipe it, run back, and hope the pull goes better next time. If everything gets picked up anyway and stabilizes after the double-pounce, just battle-res the mauled player and move on! (Edit: they've been nerfed to not be instant-death on a double pounce anymore, at least ;) ).